Digital graphic design, image editing, audio editing, and video editing applications (hereafter collectively referred to as media content editing applications or media editing applications) provide graphical designers, media artists, and other users with the necessary tools to create a variety of media content. Examples of such applications include Final Cut Pro® and iMovie®, both sold by Apple Inc. These applications give users the ability to edit, combine, transition, overlay, and piece together different media content in a variety of manners to create a resulting media project. The resulting media project specifies a particular sequenced composition of any number of text, audio clips, images, or video content that is used to create a media presentation.
Various media editing applications facilitate such composition through electronic means. Specifically, a computer or other electronic device with a processor and computer readable storage medium executes the media content editing application. In so doing, the computer generates a graphical interface that allows designers to digitally manipulate graphical representations of the media content to produce a desired result.
One difficulty in media editing is that a user cannot easily view clips that form a composite media presentation in a contextually meaningful way. Typically, the media editing application presents the clips as respective graphical objects (e.g., rectangular blocks) on a particular track spanning a timeline display area. However, this manner of clip presentation does not provide an overall visual context for the flow of the composite media presentation. Therefore, the user has difficulty in visually assessing contextually significant events in the composite media presentation when the clips are presented in the timeline.